The New Meaning of Hope
by klutzyblonde3
Summary: Isobel had Alaric's daughter without telling him.Now Bronte has come to town in hope of meeting her biological parents,only to find out they're dead.Though devastated,she comes to realize that Mystic falls offers her the family she's never had and the love she never dared hope to find.Elena and Damon have a dispute on how to deal with her newly found sister. MattxBronte DxE CxK SxB
1. Chapter 1

"Your mother's name was Isobel," the lady told me. "Isobel Saltzman."

I already knew this, and I already knew my supposed father's name, Alaric, but what I didn't know was where either of them went. Isobel may or may not be dead, and then I had absolutely no idea where Alaric had headed.

"Alaric Saltzman...do you have an address for him?" I asked her pleadingly.

"No, honey, I really don't," she was lying. I could always tell when people are lying. Always.

"Look," the nice, sweet girl that I had been with her previously was gone. Now shit was about to get real. "I know that you have some fancy schmancy program on your computer that will list all the Alaric Saltzman's in the country. All you have to do is type in the name and then show it to me on accident."

She shook her head at my idea. "It's against policy, I probably shouldn't have even told you your mother's name."

I slammed my fist on the counter, making her flinch. "I have been through nineteen foster homes in sixteen years. Two physically abused me, one sexually, three were drug dealers, four were using me for the money from the government, three barely had enough food for me. Now tell me that isn't against policy."

Her eyes widened in sympathy and shock. She looked like one of those women than used to be sheltered as a child and still wasn't aware of what went on in the real world even into her late twenties because of her mindset. She must have felt really sorry for me because she typed in the name into her computer. Looking around for anyone that was listening, she realized that everyone was half asleep or delving deep into their work to distract themselves from how miserable they really were.

"It's a town called Mystic Falls, it's a town in Virginia. It doesn't give me a certain address, but it tells me that he is the history teacher at the local high school," she informed me, giving me a pitiful smile. I hated pity, but if it got me what I needed, I was more than willing to deal with it.

"Thank you," I told her, picking up my bag and slinging it over my shoulder again. "No one hears about this conversation, you got that?"

She nodded. "Please, I don't want to get fired."

That was the last thing that I'd be worried about in her position.

I had read their journals over and over again. At first when I had just read Isobel's diary, I just thought that she was psycho, but after reading Alaric's journal about his theories of a vampire killing his wife, my mother, I realized that it was true. That wasn't the only factor influencing me to believe in their existence. There have been strange things that have happened to me in my lifetime. I remember seeing glimpses of the a teenage girl throughout my life. She stayed the same, never aged, even as I grew up into my teenage years.

There was a time that I went into a very brutal, abusive home. One day after a man hit me so hard that I passed out, he was dead when I woke up. The authorities said that it was alcohol poisoning, but alcohol doesn't make you bleed from the neck. I still had trouble believing it, but who was I to say whether these things did or did not exist?

Mystical Falls was over a thousand miles away from Denver," I sighed, thinking about how the hell I was going to get there? Well there was that expensive ring that I had stolen from my last foster mom after she 'forgot' to feed me again. Looks like that was going to be my ticket to Mystic Falls.

The bus arrived in Richmond around seven in the evening. For once, I didn't get stuck next to the perv who 'accidentally' falls asleep in your lap. No, instead, it was an elderly lady that shared her cookies with me, really really dry cookies.

Through three different rides and a couple miles of walking, I finally arrived in Mystic Falls by ten. For some reason, the police department was still open, but with very few people working in it. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door to go inside and talk to someone that could hopefully help me. I swallowed the giddy feeling that I might get to meet my biological father tonight.

"Doctor Fell, I'm sorry, but I've told you that I have no idea what happened with the explosion."

This was a very interesting conversation to walk in on. Explosion?

"And you really think that Damon didn't do it?" The woman, (Dr. Fell?) sounded much younger than the other woman, who must have been at least in her mid forties.

"Damon is an arrogant person. If he did it, he would be bragging about it right now," she explained. "I just honestly don't know what happened, but I can tell you that it was probably supernatural."

"We need to find out soon, for the sake of everyone in this town," Dr. Fell forewarned. A period of time passed where she must have been checking the time. "Crap, I'm late for my shift, I better get going. Please, be careful, Liz."

The woman passed me in a whirl, almost knocking into me before I stepped out of the way. The other woman, Liz, stepped out of the office as well, almost jumping when she saw me in front of her.

"Can I help you?" She asked me. "It's a bit late."

I nodded. "Sorry, I'm trying to find someone."

"At eleven at night?" She glanced at the clock on the wall.

"It's a really long story," I brushed off her question. "Do you know a man by the name of Alaric Saltzman?"

Her eyes looked away from mine, avoiding eye contact. "Yes, I did."

"_Did? _As in past tense?" I asked breathlessly.

She nodded. "He passed away a month ago...from an animal attack?"

It was obvious that she was lying when she said that the cause of death was animal attack. Looked like I had come to the right town after all.

"Animal attack?" I asked again, raising an eyebrow up.

My muscles had gone lax, my legs were struggling to keep me up. I guess I should have been prepared for this moment. I had been foolish to think that for once in my life something would actually work out for the better. How could I be so stupid?

"Were you related to him?" She asked me.

I shook my head. "My dad was an old college friend of his. When I called my dad tonight and found out my mom and I were in Mystic Falls, he wanted to see if Ric still lived here."

Just like her lie had been obvious, so was mine.

"Do you need a ride back to your hotel?" She offered. "There's some crazy things that happen in this town at night."

I shook my head, even though I knew that it would be safer if I did go with her. Thing was, I didn't have a hotel room, or anywhere to stay. "No, I need to get something to eat, do you know of a place?"

"There's a place down the street that's open all Saturday night, it's just down the street. Please, let me give you a ride," her eyes were pleading with me. Her eyes conveyed death...lots and lots of death. She'd seen lots of it recently and she didn't want anymore anytime soon.

"Yeah, I'd appreciate that," I mustered up the biggest smile that I could and gave it to her.

So that was it...my dad's dead.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

The place that she dropped me off at was your typical small town restaurant. It was the place that was the hangout because there was nowhere else to hang out. Pool tables, a bar, booths etc. Though, for a Saturday night, it seemed low on business, but I think I had seen something about another even elsewhere. And in these small towns; when there was an event, everyone was there. It had a very unoriginal name, too, they had just taken the first word of the town name and tacked on 'grill' to it. But did have a very antique, homely feel to it. The best part of the bar was that they had absolutely no restrictions as far as age. It was fairly obvious that I was sixteen and I would never be able to pass for much more than seventeen.

The amount of alcohol that I had already drank was starting to catch up with me, making me dizzy and it was dragging me down. I'm not one of those party-girl drinkers that starts acting crazy, but more of one of those 'fuck-off' types when I'm drunk. Getting drunk was not about having fun for me, but forgetting my sorrows and troubles.

"I wouldn't sit there if I were you," the bus boy warned me. "That's Damon's spot."

I looked up to see a boy with the whole boy-next-door going. He was smiling down at me with a smile that could win a Grammy all on its own. If I were a normal girl, I would actually give a damn about how I looked, which was probably horrible. "Sorry, I didn't know that you guys had a seating chart."

"We didn't used to...it just kind of happened," he shrugged it off, not bothering to remember when the seating chart had started.

I sighed and dragged myself to the seat on my left.

He shook his head.

"What now?" I asked.

"That's Alaric's seat."

My head snapped up at the mention of Alaric. "You knew Alaric?" I asked him, my eyes latching onto him. All the vague fog that I had felt before was now gone. Unfortunately, i couldn't say the same thing about the sinking feeling in my heart.

"Yeah, I knew Alaric," he gave a half-hearted, bitter-sweet smile at the thought of my dad. Then he realized that he had never seen me before in his life, his face turned quizzical. "I don't recall Ric ever saying anything about family members your age. How did you know him?"

I looked down at my shot glass. "I didn't, he was an old friend of my dad's. But then I found out that he passed away...from an animal attack. Funny, because my dad never described him as one to get attacked by an animal."

"How did they know each other?" He asked.

"College," I was surprised how lying came so easily to me when I was drunk. But then I decided that if this guy knew something about what...business my dad was in, 'college' wasn't going to be a very good clue. "And they were both very...avid hunters, to say the least."

"What kind of animals?"

"Rare...and lethal," I was narrowing it down for him.

"Well, Alaric definitely kept up on his hobby until he died," boy next door was making it very easy to narrow it down.

"What were the bullets made of?" Now it was my turn to ask the questions.

"Depends on what species..." he cocked his head to the side. "Silver, vervain, wood."

That confirmed it enough for me. "Did you ever go along with him?"

He gave out a dry laugh. "He was my mentor in that area. Did your dad ever take you?"

"No, he tended to keep me out of the family business. Doesn't mean I've never done any of my own."

"That's too bad, Alaric was my father for all intents and purposes," he shrugged, giving me one of those lost puppy looks.

"Speaking of Alaric..."

That voice came out of nowhere, making me jump. I looked over to find a vaguely familiar glowering down at me. He was staring intently at me, as if trying to read my mind or something of the sort. "You're going to forget this ever happened to you."

"Forget it, Damon," boy-next-door told Damon. "She knows...she probably has vervain in her system right now."

Did this mean he was a vampire? I was surprised about how calm my whole body mind was reacting to meeting a vampire for the first time in my life. Shouldn't I be running out of the building screaming at the top of my lungs?

"Well, isn't that convinient," Damon was in a very sour mood. Whether he was a vampire or not...I didn't want to risk putting him in an even worse mood than he was in now.

"I'll be out of your way," I told him apologetically, slipping out of my dad's barstool.

Before I was even a step towards the door, boy-next-door, called out to me, "hey, I didn't catch your name."

Smirking, I turned around, "I never gave it to you."

I don't know what his reaction was because I never saw it.

Matt's POV

Matt and Damon both felt responsible. Damon was on good terms with Elena, which meant he also had on his 'good guy' charade for the time being. To Matt, this could be a good or bad thing, depending on how 'good' Damon was feeling.

"Hospital?" Damon asked.

Matt was shocked that he was actually asking him for an input in a situation. "Noo, we don't need to explain to the hospital that we were allowing underage drinking."

"Oh, Matt," Damon's voice was disproving. "That's illegal."

"Don't even start with me," Matt shook his head. "We don't have the rest of the year to list all of the illegal things that you've done."

Damon took another look at the unconscious girl he had brought behind the counter so the rest of the customers wouldn't see what was going on. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"Yeah, looks freakishly like Elena," Matt agreed, already knowing what Damon was going to say.

"This isn't a coincidence, there's no such damn thing in this town" Damon muttered, shaking his head at the uncanny resemblance.

"Yeah, but did you see her eyes? Elena's are brown, but hers are practically turqoise. Did you see how bright they were?" Matt found himself looking at the girl yet again. He didn't see Elena, he saw a whole other girl with a totally different personality. She had a rebel streak, he could already tell this by talking to her for five minutes.

Damon raised an eyebrow at Matt's very un-macho attitude. "I'm going to pretend that you never said that," he shook his head. "What about parents?"

"I don't think she has any in town...did you see the stuff in her bag? Clothes, make-up bag...she doesn't live here. She came to this town looking for Alaric for a reason," Matt observed. "Even if she did have parents in town...what are we supposed to tell him?"

"Look, I would take her, but I don't really want to explain why there's a Elena look alike in my room," Damon put his hands in the air to signify that there was nothing he could do about the over-night arrangements.

Matt looked around. "I'll call Jeremy and have him cover for me. Then I can take her to my place."

"Oh, so you want to tell Jeremy that we may have discovered his sister's twin?" Damon pointed out.

"I'll just tell him that I'm not feeling that great," Matt shrugged, understanding why Damon would be a little iffy on showing this girl to Jeremy just yet.

"Fine, take her to your house. We'll deal with in the morning," Damon picked the girl up and handed her over to Matt. "Just don't do anything stupid with her."

"Isn't that more your thing?" Matt scoffed.

"Touche," Damon grinned, grabbing a bottle of whiskey off the shelf and headed out the door.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three Bronte's POV

"It's all your fault," the man told me. "Everything is your fault.'

I shook my head, confused about why I was reliving something more than six years in my deep, dark past. "What's my fault?"

"Your mom gave you up. That's why your adoptive parents died. Because of you."

What adopted parents? My entire life had always consisted of one foster home after another. Unless I had an adoptive family before I could even remember.

_15 and a half years ago; Third POV_

_A couple by the name of Jenkins were in love with the little baby girl that had miraculously come up from one of the husbands students. People would tell you that the couple would do anything for the child, even after only having the baby for less than a month. They had tried for years to have their own, but it just was never going to happen. When the time came, their love for the child was going to be tested to its limits. _

_Before Elena was obviously the doppelganger of Katherine, some of Elijah's scouts had been tracking down the whereabouts of Bronte as she was another descendant of Katherine. They were to get the child at any cost. Kill whoever they had to kill, except keep the girl alive. Since they had found the girl, they were just waiting for the right time to snatch her out of her crib and be away in the blink of an eye. They went in around two in the morning, sure that the parents would be asleep so there wouldn't be a mess to clean up. _

_Little did they know that the parents were more than prepared for a kidnapping than anyone in the state. Isobel had warned them there would be people going after the child if they found out who she was. That's the whole reason that Isobel had hidden her daughters in the first place. She knew everything...everything about Katherine and the curse, about the doppelganger. She knew that the doppelganger could also be one of her own daughters. So, though it might have seemed selfish to others, giving up her daughters to live with someone else was the second best thing she had ever done for them no matter how much she had really wanted to keep the both of them. _

_The Jenkins had a fake nursery where they always put a fake, but very realistic, baby in every night. The baby girl really slept with them in bed. They were right when they calculated that the dangers of rolling over her in their sleep was much less than their fear of her getting kidnapped. _

_"Did you hear that?" Lauren shook her husband violently for a few seconds before he finally woke up in a startled mess. _

_"What?" Robert looked to make sure that the child was still in between them, relieved when he found that she was. That feeling didn't last so long when he spotted the look on his wife's face. _

_"You know the drill," he whispered quietly. _

_She nodded in response, lifting the baby up from the bed and injecting the drug that would keep the baby under for a little over three hours. Any chance of her crying and all of their efforts would be for nothing. She laid her in the cardboard box, laced with vervain so that no vampire could get into it without a great deal of pain. They also didn't know that the box was spelled. Anyone of vampire blood could not open it. Holes were drilled into it so she would have enough flow of oxygen to survive. When she woke up, someone would hear her cry and hopefully that someone would be human, someone not involved with any of this. Someone that could help offer her a life of normalcy and not be stuck with this curse of hers. _

_Robert grabbed a baseball bat and headed to the fake nursery. _

_"Where's the baby?" A man in a black trenchcoat demanded.  
_

_"Away...at her grandparents house," Robert lied. "Over in the next town." _

_"Liar!" He was enraged, livid. "I can tell when humans are lying." _

_"Well, I can tell you one thing, you're never going to find her without killing me first," Robert spat. _

_"Then I guess we can arrange that," the vampire smiled with his fangs out, ready to feed._

_Before Robert could blink twice, the vampire had approached him in the blink of an eye. The vampire sunk his teeth into his neck and fed on him until he had been drained of all of his blood. Lauren, who had been watching from the shadows, had felt a scream building up but had managed to keep it under for this long. Finally, though, it was too much. She screamed at the top of her lungs at the horror of her husbands death. _

_"Humans...they're so...weak," he observed, catching Lauren as she tried to run away. "Now are you going to tell me where the baby is or not?" _

_"No, never," she answered, with tears in her eyes. _

_With her answer, he snapped her neck. That was the end of the Jenkins, protecting a child that wasn't theirs. The child, though, was found by a neighbor after eight hours and was taken to the hospital where the government social workers took care of the rest. _

Bronte's POV

I woke up in a start. Talk about a weird dream...even weird for being drunk. The weirdest thing was how real it felt. Like it actually happened to me. Then I realized I was in a room that I had never been in before in my life with the worst hangover I've ever felt. Sitting up, I looked around and saw boy-next-door sitting in a chair half asleep with a biology book in his lap.

"Holy shit," I muttered when I first spotted him.

"Whoa, what happened?" He shook himself wide awake and looked straight at me.

"Did we...?" I shuddered. One night stands were...not something I did. I recalled how I had randomly passed out after getting up and finishing my shots. "Oh my God...you put something in my drink didn't you?"

His eyes widened at the accusation. "What? No!"

"Then why am I in your bed?" I demanded. I don't cry, I scream instead. That's where I was about to go. "Why am I not in the hospital?'

"Well, you sure seem fine now," he pointed out.

"How do I know that I can trust you?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Look around, this is my sister's old room. Your clothes are still on. My clothes are still on from last night. Other than that, there's nothing else that I can tell you to convince you."

"Sorry...I have trust issues, I guess," I admitted.

"Speaking of trust...you told me that your dad was looking for Alaric. Turns out, you don't have any known parents. No I.D, no cell phone, no credit cards and nothing that could possibly identify you. Except, you have a couple of Alaric's journals. And his wife, Isobel, you have one of her journals as well. You also had clothes, tooth brush and over-night stuff in your bag. You didn't move here...you came here just to find Alaric and I want to know why."

I swallowed, realizing that I was not getting out of this. Not without telling him, I wasn't. "You wouldn't believe me."

"Look, two of my ex-girlfriends are vampires. Ric turned into a vampire. My best friend can see dead people," he explained. "And you're trying to tell me that I'm not going to believe just about anything that you throw at me."

I leaned my head back, groaning because my head had been hit by a semi truck. "Yeah, thought you'd say something like that," he told me apologetically. "But that doesn't mean you're getting out of telling me why you have Alaric's things."

I sighed heavily and looked at him straight on. "Alaric and Isobel were...my birth parents."

He raised his eyebrows. "That would explain so much."

**Thank you soooo much for reading. It makes me really happy. I'm open to any suggestions, critiques or reviews, just review away :). **


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